Pirate's Cove

Democrats keep using the filibuster to stop GOP legislation in the Senate, because they love the notion of the minority party having some power in the system, because we are not a democracy, we are a federal republic. It’s not just voting for president. But, they want to kill it if they’re in power. They should remember that they won’t always control the Senate

Please, Democrats: Kill the Filibuster

The persistence of the filibuster is one of the deeper political mysteries of the age. As a legislative tool, it has a profoundly dishonorable history. People remember it as the tool that Sen. Jefferson Smith used to defeat Sen. Joseph Harrison Paine and his corrupt political machine. But Jeff Smith and Joe Paine never existed; they were fictional characters played by Jimmy Stewart and Claude Raines in Frank Capra’s 1939 film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Jeff Smith was based loosely on Montana Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, a Democrat who became the victim of a sham investigation after he exposed corruption in Warren G. Harding’s Justice Department; but no filibuster figured in that tale.

The filibuster’s true pedigree is as an instrument of white supremacy. It was used throughout the first half of the 20th century by Southern senators to block federal anti-lynching legislation, and, later, to delay passage of the 1957 and 1964 Civil Rights Acts. When people think of the filibuster, they shouldn’t think of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington; they should think of Billie Holliday’s haunting recording of “Strange Fruit” (written by Abel Meeropol, who would later adopt the young sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after they were electrocuted for violating the Espionage Act of 1917; but I digress).

BTW, which party were those Senators who block the Civil Rights Acts?

The filibuster has been dying over the past decade, but it’s been dying way too slowly. The Democrats in 2013 eliminated the filibuster for all presidential nominations excepting nominations to the Supreme Court. This was decried as “the nuclear option,” but its effect was entirely salutary. The Republicans in 2017 then eliminated the filibuster for nominations to the Supreme Court. The move was decried once again as “nuclear,” yet life went on.

It’s long been assumed that if the Senate goes Democratic in November that the last remaining filibusters—those for legislation—will get “nuked” as well. At John Lewis’s funeral, former President Barack Obama rightly called the filibuster a “Jim Crow relic” and called for its elimination.

See? Protecting the minority is now a relic of Jim Crow. Now, just imagine what Obama would have said if the GOP could have jammed through their own legislation, including nuking Obamacare, when they had control of the House and Senate with ease. Bet Obama liked the filibuster at that point, eh?

All sorts of Democrats are hot to trot to do away with the filibuster. Remember, what goes around comes around.